


The Shadows Claim Us

by Nine_Stoic_Crayolas



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Gaara's a lil shit at first, Jiraiya is just dONE, Orochimaru is amused, SAKURA IS DONE, Sakura brings the sannin back together, Sakura has a different backstory, Sakura hates everyone, Sakura hates the Sand too, Sakura hates the sand, Sakura makes the world a better!place, She is angry, Soul-Searching, Suna!Sakura, Tsunade likes her, actually, and annoying, orochimaru has a soft spot for tiny tsunade, she's kinda always angry in my stories, suna is hot, therapy no jutsu, trips to suna
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 19:43:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 39
Words: 6,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14385798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nine_Stoic_Crayolas/pseuds/Nine_Stoic_Crayolas
Summary: Suna!Sakura"You don't want to go near that one." "Why?" "...She's damaged goods."





	1. Chapter 1

“You don’t want to go near that one.”

Gaara looked up at Yashamaru frowning.

“Why?”

His Uncle looked at him, brilliant green eyes dull in the heat of the sun, “She’s damaged goods.”

Gaara froze, his heart speeding up, “Like…like me?”

“No.” There is a pause after the word. “No, not like you.”

Gaara’s shoulders slumped.

“Oh.”

Yashamaru pats his head. He leans into the touch—it has been _so_ long—and—and—

Gaara doesn’t look at the small, green-eyed girl with the pink hair for a long, long time.


	2. Chapter 2

Sakura panted underneath the heat of the sun, trying to cover up every inch of pale skin with the dirty, sweaty clothes she’d managed to sneak out of the communal baths.

It is too hot for someone like _her_ to be outside.

“Animal.” She hears someone whisper at her.

She turns.

A man, tall, black eyes.

Vicious hatred spews in his face, his jaw harsh and cruel, ready to pick her apart.

Sakura snarls, making sure he catches sight of the sharp, pointy teeth she’d filed down into needles.

He blanches and then turns away, his fists clenching.

Sakura doesn’t look back as she scurries away.  


	3. Chapter 3

Sometimes, under the evening stars, Sakura tries to remember long lost touches, fading illusions of warm hugs around her bony shoulders, ready to give everything for her to live.

Sometimes, looking up at the cloudless sky, Sakura presses her face against the still-warm sand and hopes that one day it will be someone else’s warmth.

For now, she curls up into a ball on the highest building, her mouth set in a scowl as she nibbles away at the crackers she’d snuck from trash cans and waste centers.

They taste funny like old socks but she doesn’t mind.

She has tasted the mud before—this is nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

They don’t catch her a lot of the time but—but—when they do she has to scream to make them leave her alone.

She hurries down alleyways, twisting and lurching behind twists and winds in the sand, throwing over fruit stands and trash cans to stop them.

Sakura’s breath is coming in sharp pants—not unusual, she thinks as someone reaches out to swipe a kunai at her ratty hair—but definitely undesired.

“Get _back_ here you— _kaijin!_ ” A woman bellows.

Sakura ducks another senbon needle but her knees give out.

She curses, yowls and screams all the way to the Kazekage tower, hoping that today is the day they will let her go home.


	5. Chapter 5

“So they want you to be a shinobi, then?” Obaba asks a hard glint in her eyes.

Sakura hangs her head, wiping blood off her brow.

She remembered the Kazekage’s instructions— _“You owe us, girl.” He’d said, “You owe us more than you know.”_ —and nodded.

“Fucking bastards. You’re four and a half.”

“Foot soldier.” Sakura says through a pronounced lisp. “I ain’t no fool.”

Obaba turns piercing dark eyes to her. The skin of her face is heavy with age, nearly falling off her bones.

“No.” Obaba says quietly. “You ain’t no fool, girl.”

Sakura nodded. Then sat down on the step of the front door, a shy grin slipping onto her face.

“Mandarins?” She asks hopefully.

Obaba scoffs. “In the kitchen.”


	6. Chapter 6

“Girl!” Obaba shouts from the kitchen, her voice echoing across the house in a sharp yell. “There’s a man here to see you!”

Sakura snarls, dragging clumsy, bitten fingernails through her ratty, greasy hair.

She looks and smells like something dead, she knows.

“What does he want?” She shouts back.

“I am not your messenger, girl! Come and see for yourself!” Obaba reprimands.

Her footsteps are heavy and thrumming with anger as she stomps towards the kitchen, a fierce glare and vicious words on her lips.

Dark eyes, black hair, darker skin.

The man scowls at her. “You must be…the kaijin.”

Sakura wants nothing more than to rake her bitten, jagged nails down his face but she stops herself at a look from Obaba.

The older woman hates blood on her kitchen floor.


	7. Chapter 7

The sun is harsh on her back and Sakura grunts as she feels a drop of sweat travel down her spine.

Her instructor scowls. “It’s been a week, kaijin, since you’ve picked up a kunai. Why haven’t you been practicing?”

Sakura glares. She wishes she could light the man on fire, smiling as his skin sizzled off his bones. He’d be prettier then too; the scars on his face and neck making him look like a barren scarecrow.

“Kaijin is _not my name._ ” Sakura growls, her fists clenched in tight angry balls. “Learn it.”

The instructor scoffs. “When you can throw thirty kunai in the space of two minutes, I’ll bother with learning your name.”

The sun beats down on her brow and Sakura wonders just what on earth she has done to deserve this sort of treatment from the village.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kaijin means animal/monster thing so there ya go if you're curious


	8. Chapter 8

“Mandarins are in the kitchen.” Obaba says quietly when she slinks back into the house, her face wet from the angry, embarrassed tears and her frame trembling with rage.

“Mm.” Sakura cannot bring herself to say more.

She knows she’ll yell and scream and cry otherwise and she’s already shown enough emotion after the absolute _disaster_ that was training today.

As Sakura bites into the fleshy fruit, she closes her eyes, drinking in the flavored juice, licking her chapped lips as she lets the flavor of the orange fruit coat her bloodied tongue.

“Thank you.” Sakura whispers to Obaba when she leaves for the night.

The older woman just scoffs. “Who’d do my dishes otherwise?”

Sakura leaves with a secretive smile on her face, joy filling her up to the seams.


	9. Chapter 9

It takes her a week to finally throw thirty kunai in the space of four minutes.

Her teacher barely acknowledges her and presses her harder during her spars until her legs are shaking so badly she has to drag herself home.

A woman spits on her as she makes her way to Obaba’s.

Sakura’s hatred grows.

As she finally sees Obaba’s house in the distance, she makes a promise to herself.

“I will make it.” She grunts out as the sand peels the skin off her palms. “I _will_ get out of here.”

_And find mother._


	10. Chapter 10

“You hold too much hatred in you.” Obaba tells her one day after she is done stuffing mandarins in her face.

Cool, flavored juice travels down her chin and Sakura eagerly sticks out her tongue and laps it up.

Obaba grimaces.

Sakura just smiles, uncaring that she carries three days of grime on her body.

She refuses to waste Obaba’s water—the old woman is…special. Sakura will not take anything but her mandarins from her.

(And maybe, if Obaba wants to, her affection.)

“I don’t care.” Sakura answers after a little while. “No one likes me—no one would like me even if I saved the Kazekage himself—I’m just a stupid _war prize._ ”

Tears trickle down her cheeks and Sakura rushes to wipe them away.

Obaba watches the hatred, pain and agony grow within the girl and hopes _someday_ that the girl will find it in her to forgive Obaba’s people.


	11. Chapter 11

When she is training, she hears the screams.

Her instructor—she has not bothered to learn _his_ name either—freezes on the spot, letting a kunai she’s thrown whiz past his cheek and slice the tip of his ear.

Something wet, gurgling and utterly _savage_ echoes in the streets and Sakura feels panic itch under her skin, the strength of her instincts pressing against her will to stay put.

“What’s—what’s going on?” Sakura manages to choke out from behind her fear.

“The monster—the monster lost control…” Something flashes in the man’s eyes and Sakura frowns because she knows _she’s_ the only monster—the only _kaijin_ —here.

“Get inside, girl.” He breathes out, suddenly all business, “Don’t leave the house until ANBU says so.”

As she speeds towards Obaba’s house, panic rising in her throat, she realizes it is the first time since her instructor called her anything other than a monster.


	12. Chapter 12

It is three days—three days of hiding in cupboards, under tables and biting jagged nails—before Obaba opens the door to find a swaying blackops there, blood splattered across his mask.

“The girl has been requested.”

Obaba hesitates. Her mouth opens slightly, as if call out before she closes it with a snap.

The blackops just looks at her, expectantly.

_If only,_ the old woman thinks desperately, _if only they would see she is a child—not an instrument of war._

“Girl! There’s a man for you here!” Obaba shouts, dreading every syllable that leaves her mouth.


	13. Chapter 13

There is something heavy in the air when the blackops comes into view.

Sakura wants to snarl at him, to run away or maybe throw kunai and senbon so he can’t follow her but she doesn’t do anything of the sort.

Obaba looks at her and there is a heaviness in her eyes, a sort of desperate mad desire to do _something_ that stops Sakura in her tracks.

“Where’s the instructor?” She asks quietly, surprised when her voice does not waver.

The blackops hesitates—she sees it, _she can always see it_ —and Sakura’s mouth sharpens into an edge.

“He’s dead.” The blackops tells her. “The monster killed him.”

There is a heaviness as she follows the blackops out the door. Confused panic threatens to choke her because—because—

_She is the one they call kaijin._

And she didn’t kill him.


	14. Chapter 14

Sakura is pale as she enters the office.

The blackops, despite his forced arrogant air, is shaking.

There was blood _everywhere_ —muscle stuck to the sand, bloodied teeth cradled by crumbling rocks, a bashed-in skull lying a little ways away.

She had wanted to throw up but she swallowed down her bile and held her breath as they passed by the rotting, mangled corpse.

The Kazekage doesn’t stand but he lifts his chin as he sees her, small, tiny and quiet for once.

“I see you have been introduced to my son’s…work.”

Fear, sharp, hot and vicious rises in her lungs and Sakura wishes with _all her heart_ that she was not the one standing there in the office, ready to hear what was most probably a death sentence.


	15. Chapter 15

Rasa knows, _knows in his bones,_ that he should have let the pretty Iwa girl go the minute the mother had left her at the gates and never looked back.

But personal greed, shame and even…lust for power had consumed him.

Iwa owed him now—they were such a tight-knit community they _never_ let anyone leave the village—and keeping the little girl alive, despite her raging hatred of him, her bright anger and vicious words, gave him an advantage.

He had checked in with her every now and then, often grimacing as he noticed the way his people treat her—despite doing _nothing_ to stop it—but...knowing he had a little bit of another country under his control, no matter how little, no matter how _small_ gives him hope.

“You have an assignment.”

He will shape her into his weapon.

He will shape her into a monster that is only _his._


	16. Chapter 16

She is shaking as they escort her to the pen.

_The cage._

“It’s in there.” The blackops points, standing as far away as he possibly can.

_He._ She thinks, _It’s a he. A boy. A he._

The boy—because it is a _boy_ not an _it_ —is hunched in the corner, his eyes riveted to the floor.

He is shaking.

The cage bars gleam in the low light.

Sakura wants to curse everything under the sun.


	17. Chapter 17

There is someone there.

Under the haze of rage, betrayal and agony, he can tell someone is standing in front of him.

_Kill them too,_ the shukaku whispers in his head, snide and sure in his abilities, _kill them and we shall be free._

He closes his eyes, his breath coming stutters.

He does not want to _hurt_ —but—he remembers his Uncle’s eyes; calm, steady and proud as he raised his hands to kill him and his heart stutters in his chest.

_(“No heart.” His Uncle had goaded, “You took my baby sister’s life—monster!”)_

He sucks in a shuddering breath.

The little someone comes closer.


	18. Chapter 18

“I don’t—“Sakura starts, half-turning, half-pleading, trying to get away but the blackops shoves her forward, slamming the door behind her.

Her heartbeat rises.

_She is in the cage._

He opens his eyes.

They are green. Angry, outraged, betrayed but…green.

_Like hers._

“Hello.” She offers in a bare whisper, hoping to all the gods she knows that they are _wrong_ about this boy.


	19. Chapter 19

“Hello.” The someone whispers.

The thing has a soft voice.

_It’s scared._ The shukaku chuckles, reveling in the fear, _it’s scared of a tiny boy._

_Shut. Up._ He thinks furiously.

This is the first time in four days that someone has spoken nicely to him.

_Be careful boy,_ the demon warns, _lies are always under pretty teeth._

He hesitates. _Okay. I’ll listen._

Somehow the demons purr doesn’t sound as foreboding as before.


	20. Chapter 20

Sakura sits, her head aching, her mouth dry as she stares at the huddled boy.

It is day four.

They bring her back here every morning, shoving her past the bars leaving her scrambling for purchase on the dusty floor, inhaling dirt as she trips on her anger and fear.

The boy has not spoken to her _once_.

On the street they call her the slayer.

Slayer of what, Sakura does not know; but if it’s the slayer of the boy—it is not a title she _wants._

Still, she is getting tired of them—the boy’s father, her keeper, her _interrogator_ —becoming frustrated with her. They tell her to be assertive, to establish _dominance_ —of what, Sakura does not know.

It is hot.

Sakura can feel the familiar itch of anger and rage— _why_ won’t the monster boy talk to her? _She_ is kaijin too—begin to unfold under her skin and she lifts her chin resolutely.

The boy doesn’t move from his huddle in the corner.

He watches her though—he _always_ watches her—with those steady, raging green eyes and the calm mouth.

“If you don’t want to talk to me _fine_!” Sakura shouts suddenly and she can see it startles the boy. She has only ever been kind in her words—soft, simple utterings—but _now_ she is _angry_.

She has been here for days, speaking slowly, softly—the most she’s ever spoken to anyone, even Obaba—and for every day he does not talk back, they take away more of her privileges.

Today is the day they took away her mandarins.

“Crazy boy.” She taunts, hoping he’ll rise to the bait. “Monster child. _Bastard_. Kaijin!”

“ _Kin-killer!”_ Sakura screams.

She finds out, in a hot rush of fear and anger, that the boy moves incredibly fast.


	21. Chapter 21

Her mouth is dry.

The boy holds her throat in his fingers, eyes bulging with rage.

“What do you _want_?” He spits.

She wants to thrash and curse and scream but something stops her. She knows the blackops will only come in to drag out her dead body.

But when he presses his thumb in her skin, choking her, she snaps.

“ _I_ didn’t want _anything_ —they fucking left me here—with _you!”_ She bellows. “This is _your fault!”_

Something shifts in the air.

The boy’s eyes darken a little.

“ _I_ do not want _you_.” He tells her in a growl.

She thrashes against his fingers, uncaring that he is in the prime position to kill her.

“Neither do I—your _father_ did this to me— _to you!”_ She screams, her hair loose and ratty against her neck, playing along his roughened fingers. “If you’re so angry—take it up with him. Make him understand that you _do_ _not want me._ ”


	22. Chapter 22

He is furious at first, that she tries to defy him.

She’s struggling underneath his fingertips and he _swears_ he can feel the life thrumming in her veins, under his hands—it’s exhilarating, knowing that he can just _break her_ with a twitch of his thumb, a swipe of his sands.

But he stutters—his heart; the _dead_ heart in his chest—misses a beat because—

Her eyes are green and wide and her hair is _pink_.

But most of all, Uncle—the uncle that was wrong about _everything_ —told him to stay away from her.

_(“She’s damaged goods.” “Why?” he asks, curious—maybe they can play?—“She’s damaged goods.”)_

And she’s screaming at him and it’s _fascinating._

No one has ever screamed _at_ him. Screamed because of him, yes. Screamed about him, yes. But no, not ever, _never_ at _him._

“Why are you here?” He asks and relishes in the flash of rage and fury that flits across her grubby face. “Are you here to kill me?”

“Are you fucking—seriously?” She screeches. “I don’t think I could kill you with words.”

He eyes her. How her lip twitches, how she fists her hands at her sides, how her teeth peek out of her mouth chiseled and _sharp_ and he wants to smile.

He doesn’t.

“I’m ready to see my father.”

She is fascinating because she doesn’t bow down—not even to him.


	23. Chapter 23

Rasa didn’t know what to expect the minute his son walks into his office, his hand gripping the Iwa girl’s hair, his eyes determined.

But he did not expect _this._

“She says she’s not here to kill me. Why is she here?”

“It’s not like I fucking had a _choice_ crazy-boy.”

One of the guards behind him nearly buckles at the absolute rage that fills Gaara’s eyes and the menacing chakra that escapes him. He himself sucks in a breath as the little reckless Iwa girl yells at his son.

The son that has just murdered his Uncle and would not even stop to consider murdering someone else.

He conveniently ignores the fact that _he_ was the one who ordered it.

“Shut up.” His son growls.

Rasa nearly chokes when the Iwa girl stomps her foot and _glares._

“ _You_ shut up.” She spits back. “ _I_ don’t need to be here. In fact—I’m leaving. Bye.”


	24. Chapter 24

She makes it ten feet before a shinobi grabs her shoulder, digging his fingers in _hard._

A snarl works it’s way up her throat as she turns around and sink her chiseled fangs into his unprotected skin, enjoying the way the man screams at the blood that swathes his sleeve.

Another person grabs her collar and she growls, slamming her foot backwards into their knee, grinning savagely when she hears a sickening _crack_ and the bellow of red-hot pain.

The blood trails down her chin as she hurls herself towards the door, her fingers reaching for the latch. Her vision is blurry and all she can feel is the way sweat gathers under her arms and trickles down her back as her feet barely touch the ground when she runs.

“Stop—" Someone—the stupid Kazekage probably—begins to shout but—

The cool rush of the corridor air hits her face and she throws herself out of the room, sprinting towards the stairs. Her breathing is harsh but she has a bloodied grin in her face as she leaves the room, knowing that even though they would find her in the hour, she had gotten what she wanted for the first time in _years._

Her smile fell flat once she realized what they would do to her.


	25. Chapter 25

She was _magnificent._

Even shukaku, albeit barely, agreed with him.

The fury in her gaze, the utter loathing, the way she ran towards the door even though she probably _knew_ what they would do to her once they caught her made something in his chest warm.

He wanted that.

He wanted the power to spit in people’s faces— _his father’s face_ —and run even though he knew the consequences.

He wanted that fire.

“Find her. Hunt her down.” His father seethes, his face a mask of endless fury as he nearly bellows at his ANBU. “When you find her, put her in the cell again. I’ll call in Chiyo. It seems she needs to test out some new poisons again.”

_Gaara wanted the fire._

“No.”

The word stops the entire office in its tracks.


	26. Chapter 26

She hides on the roof of Obaba's house even though she knows that will be the first place they look.

Her hands are trembling and she feels like she's about to throw up but she settles down, wiping the crusty blood from her chin and the tears on her cheeks and settles down for a long night spent in a cold, cold cell.

She's made her grave and it's time to lie in it.

_She should not have bitten that man. She should not have—_

_But—_

They deserved it, she growls in her mind, relishing in the way the man had screamed and the knee had cracked under the force of her foot.

At least now they have some semblance of her pain. At least now the could begin to understand her if they wished.

(She does not let herself hope.)


	27. Chapter 27

“No?” His father asks, his head cocked. “Why?”

Gaara feels his lips curl into a savage smile.

The ANBU next to him winces.

The chakra in the air grows heavier as he remembers—

Remembers her fire, how her eyes burned and burned and burned, how she snapped through bone and skin and sinewy muscle like it was _nothing_ to her.

He wants it.

He wants to feel the power, to encompass it in his own hands, he wants to _possess_ it.

“I want her.” He swallows a little. He must make his case if he wants her. “I will leave everyone else alone. But this one is mine. Give her to me.”


	28. Chapter 28

She pants against the heat of the sun. Her eyes are closed and she can feel the sweat gathering on her brow when a shadow falls on her.

Sakura opens her eyes to find him standing there, his mouth stuck in a scowl, his eyes alight with familiar fury.

“Come with me.” He commands her, his tone imperious.

She wants to snarl and spit and fight but she hesitates. Now is not the time to pitch another fit, not when she is sure he is ready to strip the bones from her body, the skin from her muscles.

His eyes are widened and she can see the whites around those green eyes.

Still, she has spent too much time raging against the bitterness and rage inside her that she does not trust the easy words that escape his lips.

She juts out her chin. Her eyes flash.

_Assert dominance,_ they had told her.

_Well,_ she snarled in her mind, _you’re getting what you fucking want._

“Why?”

His eyes narrow. “Father wants to talk to you.”

_You are mine now,_ is what he does not tell her.


	29. Chapter 29

Rasa is furious, raging, _wrathful_ when he hears the words come out of his son’s lips.

“You want _her?”_ He spits. “No. She is mine. She is a weapon for the village—“

His son’s eyes flash a heavy yellow-gold and the words stutter in his mouth. Fear, sharp and hot rises in his chest and for once, he wonders just how many monsters he has raised for this village. How many cruel, selfish creatures he’s fashioned with vicious words and brutal upbringings that some no longer view him as a _leader_ , instead, as a foolish little man.

“I want _her._ ” His son growls low, his voice throaty with rage. “You will give her to me or I will _take her._ ”

_Think,_ he shouts furiously in his head, _think, think, think, think_ —

“My Lord?” Chiyo interrupts, her wizened face popping out in the doorway. “You have called me?”

A smile curls his lips.

There is a way he can win. There is a way he will win.

He turns triumphant eyes towards the monster-son.

“Very well. You may have her.” Rasa tells him. He misses the heady flash in the boy’s green eyes.

Staring straight at Chiyo with a sly smile he beckons his advisor closer. “I trust you are familiar with sealing?”

“Of course, my liege.” Chiyo’s eyes flash excitedly.


	30. Chapter 30

Sakura is terrified when the boy leads her to the cell.

She spies the bloodstains where she had ripped the needles from her arms not weeks earlier and she fights the urge to bolt.

Gaara, as if sensing her fear, turns heavy, possessive eyes to her. “You are mine now. I will not let them take you from me. You will not die.”

_But I will hurt._ She knows this truth, deep in her bones, like the stars are in the sky and the water is blue, and she _knows, knows, knows,_ it will ache by the time they are done.

Sakura’s mouth is dry.

Her heart stutters in her chest when she spies the devil-woman with aged face and knives-for-hands standing at the foot of the metal gurney.

“No.” She mutters under breath. Her eyes are wide. Fear twists its way around her throat and tongue, stopping her rage in its tracks. “No. No. _No. No.”_

“Come.” Gaara nearly croons. His eyes are almost soft, as if reaching inside her to _take_ and—

She begins to thrash and scream and cry when the guards lift her by the arms and strap her down to the bed.

Gaara watches her with flashing green eyes, heavy yellow flooding his irises at every sharp scream.


	31. Chapter 31

Her screams rip through her body and hot, salty tears stream down her face, burning at the raw skin under her eyes. The pain is excruciating and she can _feel_ the way the iron-hot metal carves into her skin, the ink settling into her bones.

She had begged them to stop at first. She had begged and begged and begged; pleaded until her voice was hoarse and her lips were trembling, her eyes wide and tongue lolling, hoping for _mercy_ until—

She had seen the sick, perverse pleasure in one’s eyes. She had seen the gruesome duty in another’s and she had sworn, _sworn on everything under the sun_ , that she would rip her own throat out before she asked them for anything else— _for anything they could hold against her._

Vomit lurches in her stomach and she struggles to roll to the side, her face wet with tears, to try and avoid choking on her throw up.

“Aw the bitch’s got to hurl.” One of them cussed.

“Messing up the ceremony. Keep the chakra there, burning, if you let go she’ll have to get another one.” The devil-woman bites out.

Her throat is raw and her nose stings from the tears and the heaving of her chest when they dig in the final arch, loop, dip, curl to the seal on her shoulder.

_Stop_ , she bellowed in her mind as they rolled her over and dragged a wet, soothing cloth over her burning skin.

_I am not—I am not yours._

She must have said it aloud because one of them scoffs, “You were ours the minute your Iwa mother left you at the gate with no care in the world.”

Her sobs fill the room again but this time she cannot stop herself from letting them see.


	32. Chapter 32

Irrational, all-consuming fury fills him at the sight of her on the rusty hospital bed, her face pale and drawn, the angry seal that spells out _property of the Sand_ in neat, cursive kanji reddened by hours of careful sealing and bonding to him.

_To the village,_ is what they do not tell him, _she is bonded to the earth beneath Suna, the sky over them, the heat that simmers in the air—_

The circle is small, the kanji nearly undetectable to the untrained eye, making up a pretty sphere that looks like the roots of a braided tree.  

It is tiny and yet, so powerful.

_It keeps her his._

“Why is she like this?” He spits out, his rage incensed as he watches her unconscious form crease in displeasure.

The medics cower behind him and he thinks of it for a moment—ripping them apart, watching their shreds fall to the floor, the muscle and bloodied bone fall to the floor in a beautiful masterpiece—but the girl’s moans bring him back to reality.

He shakes his head.

“G-Gaara-s-sama, the girl is sealed to an unstable chakra. The force on her own bodily systems is jarring—give her time. She will recover.”

“How _long.”_ He growls out. This was not the plan he wanted. She was supposed to be _his_. The power, the rage, the anger was _his_ now. They could not keep it chained and locked away for long.

He would come for her if they did.

“A—A week.” One of the medics squeaked. “Two at most.”

He pins them with a cold stare full of rage and brutal promise before disappearing in a cloud of sand.


	33. Chapter 33

She wakes up slowly, easing herself to the present.

Sakura freezes when she feels the pinch of the seal on the back and the ache of the carved words.

Nausea rises in her stomach and she barely has time to roll herself over before she throws up across the bedframe.

_No. No. NO!_ She wants to scream, to yell, to rage to _burn everything down._

_What have they done? What. Have. They. DONE._

Someone coughs at the edge of her bed and she snaps murderous greens eyes towards them.

The doctor flinches at the force of her killer intent.

“Haruno-san…your seal is stable.”

“What does it _do.”_ She spits out.

He hesitates, she does not.

She rips the covers off her and twists, her hands reaching up to claw at the tender flesh. She bares her chiseled teeth and she knows she must look half-insane, her teeth are stained with blood and her fingers ache with lack of movement but she does not care.

“ _Tell me.”_

He does.


	34. Chapter 34

Her hands are trembling and she feels rage fill her. It is hot and sticky, like shame and it spills down her back to the very tips of her toes, bleeding out a shiny red on her pale cheeks.

What has she done to deserve this? Tears fill her eyes but she doesn’t let them spill down her cheeks. She bites her lip until it bleeds and then soothes the bite marks over with a shaky tongue.

Why did they do this to _her?_

“Kaijin.” She mutters to herself. Sakura ignores the half-startled look of the medic hovering over her, checking that gods damned seal, “I’ll always be _kaijin_ to them.”

Her bitter, teary smile stays in the heads of those who work on her today for a long, long time.

 The vengeance and betrayal—no matter how flimsy, how expected—stays in hers for far longer. 


	35. Chapter 35

Sakura doesn’t see the demon boy—she has given up all civilities in that gods damned medical room—until she is released.

He looks the same; with bulbous green eyes lined in charcoal black, an excited smile on his face.

Sakura _hates_ his smile. She wants to rip it off with her teeth, she wants to feel the way his skin caves to her kunai, to her fingernails, to feel the rush of his blood on the sand and to stand on the squidgy membrane of his intestines.

She wants to see him broken and heaving until he resembles a bloodied rag.

“Come.” He tilts his head regally. He still has that smile. “You are to visit the Old Witch.”

She snarls, baring her teeth. “Obaba is no _witch_.”

He laughs a cold, high sound that makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention.

“She is to father.”

And what else can she say to that?

The Kazekage always wins.

She still spits on the ground at his feet when she passes by him.


	36. Chapter 36

“Oh child,” Obaba’s eyes fill with tears when she sees the scrawl of the writing on her shoulder and the little braided seal underneath. “What have they done to you?”

Sakura’s eyes are dull and she knows her hair is more matted than usual, her lip quivering with rage and anger and everything _lost._

“They got what they wanted.” She whispers.

She lets her shoulders cave, her cheeks feel the salt of her tears. This is the only place where she does not hide, where she does not cower or rage against anyone. Obaba sees all Sakura is. Obaba is what she comes home to.

(She _is_ home.)

Obaba it seems, cannot help the sobs that escape her.

Sakura sits with her long into the night until Gaara comes to collect her.

She puts her snarl back on and hides her red eyes with a murderous glare.

“You will stay with me from now on.” He tells—orders—her. “You are mine.”

_Only in body,_ she promises herself, _Never in soul._


	37. Chapter 37

Gaara is frustrated.

She was supposed to be _different_ , better than the others and yet—

Her face is pale and the angry sneer on her lips is more bitter and tired than anything else.

It sets his veins on fire when he thinks of her screams in the little dank, dark room underneath the Kazekage tower and he wonders if they could have given him to her without the seal. She was fiery and defiant and vengeful and Gaara _wanted it._

There was a certain allure, a certain feeling of power when he looked at her ratty hair and the way her jagged, dirty fingernails curved into the palms of her hands, her lip bleeding as she stopped herself from running in that office.

But this, this is _different._

 Her hair is no longer ratty and unwashed, the servants in his room having carted her off to the washrooms, her yowls going unheard.

No, she returned clean and sparkling, her surprisingly pale skin free of dirt and sand, her long hair reaching the small of her back, sleek and smooth and shining.

The girl growls in her throat as they throw her back into the room with him. She whips bottle-green eyes to him and he smiles, the one that makes people run, as he notices the fire that returns to her features.

She stomps up to him, her hands fisted by her sides as she glared, murderous and raging, before swiping out at his collar, lifting him by the fabric of his shirt.

Gaara grins wider as she leans closer.

He feels her puffing breath—so frail and faint for someone like her—on the flesh of his throat and it makes something in him curl.

“Make them _stop.”_ She spits out. “Or I will tear them apart.”

He cocks his head, inspecting the way her flesh gleamed prettily, the pale skin so different from his tan and calloused skin, hardened by the years of weathering sand storms outside and sand shields. Gaara opens his mouth, leaning forward. He lets his tongue curl over the curve of her cheek and she jolts backwards, a surprised glare forming on her face.

“What is wrong with _you?”_ She snarls, shoving him away with a sharp, quick movement he nearly doesn’t catch. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

“You are mine. I will touch you when I want.” He sniffs imperially, like he’s seen his father do sometimes.

Something sharp and bitter and murderous flashes in her green eyes and she moves so fast he barely sees it.

He gasps as her nails rake across his face.

Something wet touches his cheek.

“You hit me.” His voice sounds oddly calm despite the rage that simmers inside him.

_She made him bleed._


	38. Chapter 38

Sakura stumbles back a step when Gaara’s eyes meet hers.

For all her years—all those months spent in back alleyways, chiseled teeth coated in blood and gore, eyes burning into the men who leered at her—she has never seen a person who meets her gaze like _this._

His eyes are scorching, searing into her, and she feels, for a brief, fleeting moment relief that she is not the only one who has death in her eyes.

Blood trickles down his cheek.

It looks sticky, almost like mud, and coppery red, like the crimson sands on the faraway dunes that she’s always dreamed of touching.

“You _hit_ me.” Gaara repeats.

Sakura thinks he might be in shock as he raises steady fingers to wipe at the blood that coats his face. She watches him pull away, eyes riveted on the sticky, copper-crimson blood.

A startled gasp gets stuck in her throat as he presses his hand to his mouth, licking at the blood. His eyes flash yellow and Sakura holds her tongue, her heart beating in her chest too fast.

She remembered how it felt on her cheek—warm and wet and fluid—and a part of her—a sick, perverse part of her liked the way he touched her without fear, without prejudice…without trying to kill her.

(Not even Obaba, for all her loveliness, dared to touch her.)

“You made me—“His eyes are feral, burning, and Sakura feels it now. The fear that bubbles up in her stomach, clutching at her lungs, threatening to _choke_ and _kill_ and _tear_ at the bravado that she drowned her fragility in. “ _You made me bleed.”_

His hands are at her throat with no time for her to scream out.

“ _How?”_ Gaara bellows at her. His breath is hot on her skin, his fingers digging into her neck and that part of her (the sick, decaying part of her) wants to lean in, because, because _he’s touching her—he’s touching her—_ “How did you _do it?”_

A laugh bubbles out of her.

It sounds diseased, like a rabid dog with a frothing mouth, and Sakura hopes he will tear out her throat and put her out of her misery.

“Crazy boy,” She taunts, wheezing when his hands squeeze tighter. “Monster child. I am no one’s. I will not answer your stupid questions.”

A rumble of feverish fury escapes him and Sakura’s so sure, _so, so,_ sure that he’s going to snap her neck in his hands right there when—

Someone knocks at the door.


	39. Chapter 39

When he was little, Kankuro was told he had a new brother. Temari had scrunched up her face, excitement shining in her eyes, until their father had bent at the waist, eyes flashing malevolently, and told them in strict, crushing words that Sabaku no Gaara was a monster.

That his new little brother had killed their mother.

Temari had cried tears of anger and rage and loss and she’d refused to even _look_ at their little brother.

Kankuro had gone to look only once, despite his father’s warnings.

He had been quiet, so, so quiet, sneaking past the nanny who hid her face in her scarf, arms drawing her knees close to her chest, letting the door creak open just the slightest amount.

He’d tilted his head through the door and then, then he’d gasped, high and shocked as he saw sand rushing towards him, brutal and filled with malicious chakra.

Kankuro hadn’t seen his brother until Uncle Yashamaru had become his primary caretaker.

So when he had heard of the little girl that had captured his brother’s attention, he’d decided to risk it.

Then, maybe, she’d see that Gaara was a monster and she’d run away.


End file.
